I had to take my husband to the ER last night for a kidney stone. At least half the people waiting to be seen were morbidly obese, well over 300 lbs. At 167, I’m a lot heavier than I’d like to be, in part because I know I’m in a better position to fight off disease when I’m not carrying so much weight. COVID has made me especially fearful about that, and with good reason. I don’t know the answer to how we cope with this problem.

Traditionally, fat people were looked down upon because it was assumed you couldn’t become fat without being greedy and lazy, and gluttony, greed, and sloth are three of the seven deadly sins. Vanity is another one. No wonder we’re so confused. But, it’s a lot more complicated than that.

Now that I’m older, I don’t long for chic clothes or a teeny bikini, but I do want to be healthier, to feel better, and to live longer without developing a chronic illness like diabetes. So my goal isn’t a target weight. My goal is better health. With that in mind, dropping even 10 lbs. is a step in that direction.

The sad thing is that even thin or fit people in our society are ashamed. They’re just bothered by other things: a big nose, a hairy back, a voice that grates on other people, where they came from, what they do for a living, whether or not their parents were married, what kind of car they drive, whether they rent or own. The list is endless.

I think it’s possible to love ourselves without loving everything about ourselves. If we think changing something would improve our lives, we should do it. But if we’re just going to beat ourselves up about something else (“Yikes! I lost all this weight and now I need a facelift!”), we’d do better to get our heads screwed on straight first before making physical changes.

In the end, feeling good about ourselves is the best goal we can shoot for. One way is to stop guzzling the toxic soup of social media and reality TV. I don’t care about celebrities post-baby bodies anyway. Do you? Most of that stuff is photoshopped to boot. Avoid the kind of literature where the protagonists are all slim, trim, and attractive. If we feed our heads instead of feasting our eyes, maybe we can find a happy medium. Comparing ourselves to others is dangerous. It’s much better to work toward our personal best instead.